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Sequel films: A dicey affair

Casting is the key Established actors can carry a film a long way

The moment the word sequel is mentioned, the mind gets flooded with images of Sylvester Stallone battering the opposition in the ring in the Rocky series or Harrison Ford tricking the Nazis with his wit. Sequels have been the mainstay in the film ind ustry since the evolution of modern cinema. In Hollywood, the saga started with the Thomas F. Dixon Junior’s film The Fall of the Nation in 1916, which was a sequel to the D.W. Griffith’s iconic film The Birth of a Nation (1915). Adopting the idea quickly Shree Nath Patankar made Ram Vanwas in 1918, which was followed by a series of films like Seeta Swayamvar (1920), Sati Anjani (1922) and Videhi Janak (1923).

But why do people make sequels? The recent release of Sarkar Raj, a sequel to Sarkar by Ram Gopal Verma (RGV) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth in the Indiana Jones series, support the idea that production houses and directors take up sequels, as it seems to be the easiest way to make it big at the box office and rake in the moolah.

But theatre personality L. Satyanand, who also runs a film-training institute, says that sequels might rain in cash, but are the most difficult films to make. Moreover, there is no assurance that all sequels will be a big hit. “Sequels are generally made of successful films and there are occasions when they have bombed,” says he.

Since sequels are generally made out of successful films, a lot of expectations are hinged on them. “An aura is created around the original and that make things difficult for all the key persons involved in making the sequel. People tend to compare it with the original and many successful directors like Steven Spielberg, creator of Indiana Jones series, and George Lucas, maker of the Star Wars genre, have been successful in creating a brand image and brand loyalty. So the main challenge is to live up to the brand image and retain the loyalty. Ram Gopal Verma has been successful in doing so in the Sarkar Raj,” says the trainer.

Sequel films basically depend on two aspects: Character and concept. The key players like the producers, directors and scriptwriters generally conceive the idea of a sequel with the making of the original itself. It happens when the span of the character or the concept exceeds one full-length feature film. “Either the span of the pillar character like that of Subash Nagre (Amitabh Bachchan) in Sarkar or that of Munna (Sanjay Dutt) in Munnabahi or the alien concept in Koi Mil Gaya has to be large enough to be accommodated in more then one film. Established characters play a key role in the success of such films. Actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Harrison Ford or Sylvester Stallone can carry a film a long way. Sometimes the brand also revolves round the directors,” says he.

Unlike the one off films, the mix of sequel films is very interesting. A lot depends on the cast, how intelligently the film is connected to the original and the timing of release. Many industry pundits attribute the moderate success of the latest Indiana Jones, compared to its earlier box office bumpers, to the timing of its release. The latest was released after a gap of over 19 years which literally means a generation lapse. On the other hand, Sarkar Raj was released within a period of three years. The characters of the senior and the junior Bachchans in the original are still fresh in the minds of the people and with the making of a sequel the creator builds up a good amount of curiosity around what would be the next, and cleverly RGV has left a span for another in the climax of Sarkar Raj.

“A lot depends on the scriptwriters. It is his or her duty to intelligently weave in a new twist to give freshness and at the same time maintain a link with the original. On the whole making a sequel is a dicey affair,” says Satyanand.

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